Every now and then, every rooted Android user faces this issue that while they try to activate some apps that involve security, they get a message saying that they can’t use the app because their phone is rooted. It’s good that they face it. It shows how strict Google’s security is. But on the other hand, it’s annoying too because we can’t use such apps .E.g. Most of the banking apps. Those apps are required frequently but rooted users can’t use it because their activation doesn’t complete.

Other example does include Google’s Tez. While activation Tez gives the error as below.

Your device is not passing Security checks.

Here’s how you solve the issue and get such apps working on rooted devices.

First of all, figure out your android OS version from “About phone” menu in settings and download proper ‘Magisk’ file for your rooted device.Here’s the link : Magisk Download

Boot your device into recovery. Here’s how you do it.

Search for “boot <your device model no> to recovery ” and find the keys to be pressed in order to enter your device into recovery mode.

Power of the device and start it again with key combinations your just found in above step

Your device should boot into recovery.

Well, how do you know that? – you see menus such as “install”, “wipe”, “backup” etc on the screen.

You should know how to flash a zip file in your device. Anyways, here’s how you flash it . Check out article: “How to flash zip file in your android device”.

Flash the Magisk file you just downloaded.

Restart your phone and try to install the app you wanted to install.

Now it won’t give you that warning. All secured apps now start working.

Note: As rooted android devices are assumed to be not trusted, all these apps don’t work, Installing Magisk just hides the root from apps or android security layer thus allowing you to bypass the security checks and making app work on your device. By no way, this thing is secure.

Did you remember those days where we had those CRT monitors in which picture used to get displayed with continuously emitting rays onto the display? Crazy technologies no?

Now recently few of the smartphones are exhibiting screen burn in issue. CRT and recent AMOLED display technologies are totally different technologies but screen burn in issue is been seen on both kind of displays.

Basically few things on our mobile display like navigation bar, status bar, Always ON display, wallpaper for that matter…these things are always there on the display, Display pixels(LED’s) in those portion of the screen are always been powered ON and OFF in order to display the stuff.

This continuous burden of displaying same stuff again and again causes some display pixels to retain the previous data for long time. This results in retention of information over the display for long time.

Now note here down that although this thing is called “Screen burn in” issue, there no actual burning over screen or any part of the screen. Its called so because the pixels exhibiting this behavior look like burnt in.

Here is one of the screens with this issue.

This doesn’t even happen instantly but on few models, it’s seen to happen after few months of usage. On the other hand this issue might be a serious issue if you don’t have first aid for it .

Well how to prevent your screen from this effect?

How to prevent your screen from Screen Burn in issue ?

Here are general tips . Basically preventing screen burn has to do with preventing same pixels begin lit up again and again.

Turn OFF few features such as Always ON display which kind of show the clock on center of screen. Few custom ROMS provide moving clock which basically moves the whole clock pixels few pixels apart so that same pixels won’t get lit up continuously.

Another suggestion could be to change your wallpaper regularly. It makes your phone look awesome and prevents from screen burn in too.

Don’t power display at 100% brightness . Less brightness means less current flowing through those LEDS.

Android Oreo has recently been released an is been ported for few devices. I’ll be writing an article soon on “How you backup not only the apps but the whole Android ” so that while flashing your phone, or for some reason if your phone goes off, if in case it gets soft broken, you an restore it as is.

But here’s the thing with such Backup and Restore in Android Oreo. If you backup Android Oreo ROM that has fingerprint or pin or password set for lock-screen ( Everyone’s phone has one of these now a days) using one of the recoveries like TWRP and CWM, It’s probably not gonna get restored and you won’t be able to unlock your device after restore which makes it completely unusable.

So how do you solve it ?
Here’s the steps for this.
Note: Your phone needs to be rooted in order for this trick to work.

After you restore your phhone, boot it to recovery and go to file manager.

For TWRP recovery, its here: Advanced -> File Manager

Go to path /data/system/ and find a database file called ”locksettings.db”.

Its the file which has all the info about your fingerprints and lock-screen patterns etc.

Select this file and delete it.

Reboot device.

Done! your phone won’t even remember that it had any lock-screen pattern set before. IT will simply unlock directly.

Playing with the actual processors and programming them to behave the way you wanted isn’t as easy as you think it is. Those who have been cross compiling ROMS by themselves or those who dare to flash custom ROMS into their phone would definitely know the extent of the efforts required for developing ROMS, apps for your android device.

It’s very usual that you mess up with your phone while flashing ROMS or configuring kernel etc. Here are some tips to quickly recover from such situations. I’ll be listing down more as I go on learning new ones.

Phone stuck at start up logo:

This situation is called boot-loop where while executing instructions one by one, your phones stuck in between and can’t proceed until it gets results from current task and that current task never gives results and it loops there forever. In such case, go to recovery ( search for “How to boot <your device model name” to recovery>” and wipe data, dalvik and cache partitions. In the process, you might loose all your internal data but that’s the only quick solution to get out of it. Basically you hard reset your phone.

Phone not turning ON just notification light blinks:

There could be two reasons for this. Either your phone is completely lost the battery charge, in that case you keep it for charging and wait for it to come back on.

If you keep it for charging and even after few ours of charging, if it still blinks notification light with no signs of turning ON the screen, congratulations, you have broken your phone and can’t really do anything about it. You can put it in showcase though.

fastboot.exe devices doesn’t show up any device :

while flashing you might need help from fastboot command to flash the stock firmware. Lot of times fastboot devices command doesn’t show any of the connected device. In such cases there could be two reasons for this to happen.

first, you might need to reinstall your device drivers or check if your device as fastboot drivers. Download them and install.

Else, for some OEMS, there is an extension to fastboot command like “fastboot -i 0x2b4c” for Lenovo phones. Check if your OEM has any of such extensions. Use that with fastboot. It should definitely solve the issue.

Phone not turning ON, boots into recovery:

If after flashing, your phone doesn’t turn ON, if it boot again and again into recovery, the easiest solution is to flash recovery again. It’s the recovery partition which usually gets messed up and that’s why your phone boots into recovery. Re-flashing recovery should always solve the problem.